Friday, March 11, 2016

The Ngatimoti Memorial Minenwerfers

Silent
sentinels

German
Minenwerfer trench mortars “on guard” at Ngatimoti

Intriguing curious tourists and delighting several generations of small boys who've grown up playing games around them, the guns at the Ngatimoti war memorial
are German Minenwerfer trench mortars and were war trophies brought back to New Zealand from the Western Front. Trophies of this sort were very popular after the war
and there was a lot of rather unseemly competition between the various towns and communities in New Zealand keen to get their hands on one.

The intention was originally for
trophies to be displayed at a purpose-built War Museum in New Zealand, but this never
happened. A large number of trophies had already been collected and a considerable amount of dithering about what to do with them ensued. In the end they
were mostly distributed around the country to the various local authorities who had put in requests for them.

On 25 November 1919 Lieutenant Vincent Gordon
Jervis was appointed Officer in Charge
of War Records and Trophies in New Zealand. Jervis was also appointed as the
permanent secretary to a Central Committee established at Defence Headquarters
in Wellington, consisting of the various Officers in Charge of Intelligence,
Supplies, Administration and Finance within the Army. The committee’s purpose was
to ‘deal with all questions connected with War Records, Base Records, Histories
and War Trophies.' A General Headquarters Instruction was then issued, outlining the distribution
procedure to be followed for trophies.

Those war trophies definitely identified
as having been captured by a particular unit would be forwarded to that unit’s
Headquarters for distribution. The rest of the trophies would be pooled, and
after the Dominion Museum had selected suitable items for display, the balance
of the weapons would be allotted to various districts on a pro rata basis. The
Commanders of the four Military Districts were thus to ‘set up District
Committees of all Expeditionary Force Commanding Officers in their Districts,
to make final distribution.’

By 22 December 1919, the majority of the
N.Z.E.F.’s trophies had arrived in Wellington and Lieutenant Jervis was
requested to supply a list (in quadruplicate) of ‘1. All trophies received in
New Zealand and which are Regimental property. 2. The remainder of trophies
received’, together with a list of ‘all applications received from local bodies
for allocation to their District of war trophies.’ (1)

Lt-Colonel Cyprian (Cyp) Brereton from Ngatimoti, former commanding officer of the 12th Nelson Company of the Canterbury Infantry Battalion during the war, was asked to approach the Defence Department for a suitable trophy by the Ladies' Committee in charge of the Soldiers' Memorial project - very likely in the form of his wife Daisy Brereton (nee Guy), who was the Committee's chairwoman. Brereton made quite an effort to get these particular mortars for the Ngatimoti
memorial because they were of personal significance to him and his men. When he
applied to get a trophy or trophies for the Ngatimoti War Memorial he was
originally offered something else altogether by the Office of War Records and
Trophies and he wangled a swap for the Minenwerfers instead. The Officer in Charge
of War Trophies, Vincent Jervis, had been one of Brereton’s subalterns in the
12th Nelson Coy. and no doubt went to some trouble to accommodate
his former commander. Records show that the allocation of the mortars to Ngatimoti had been confirmed by 8 October 1920, but it's not clear when they actually arrived, though it must have been quite a logistical exercise to get them to Ngatimoti. Mention was made at a meeting in July 1922 of a proposed fence "18 feet square where the guns were to be mounted ouside of the gates", indicating that they had either been received or were expected soon. It seems that ithe intention at the time was to have them mounted at a distance from the memorial rather than sitting on the steps surrounding the obelisk itself as we're used to seeing them. In the event, the fence around the memorial was not erected until 1923, and the mortars were placed on either side of the memorial instead.

Minenwerfer trench mortars caused a great deal of physical and
psychological harm to the Allied soldiers at the Western Front and Brereton speaks about this in his wartime memoir, “Tales
of Three Campaigns”.For a time in July 1916 the
12th Nelson Company men were stationed at Sector No. 3 at Armentières, a spot known as
"Minenwerfer Alley" because it was constantly bombarded by mortars.
The shells launched by these mortars (Minenwerfer means "mine (shell) launcher") emitted a particular warbling shriek which had a very unnerving
effect on the men sitting in their trenches wondering if it was their turn to cop it this
time. Because of this noise the Allied troops nicknamed the Minenwerfer shells "Moaning
Minnies".

A Kiwi soldier's "bivvie" in the trenches atArmentières, July 1916.

“The
German Minenwerfer held pride of place as a topic of popular conversation. It
seemed to figure in every sentence, and evidently the huge bombs from this
mine-thrower had made a deep impression on the company. Judging from the talk,
people spent long hours in the trenches looking up into the sky and dodging
these shells of nearly of nearly 200 pounds, packed with high explosive and,
easily seen and heard as they soared high in the air and dropped vertically. At
the top of their flight they were popularly supposed to to pause in order to
select someone’s living-place to drop upon, and the wobbling sound as they fell
was said to be 'Where’s your bivvie? Where’s your bivvie? Where's your bivvie? Thud!'

The
company sector was noted for the number of these undesirable visitors, and
rejoiced in the name of ‘Graham’s Post’ or ‘Minenwerfer Alley’”. --- C.B. Brereton (2)

It very likely gave Brereton and those of
his men who did return to the Motueka Valley a great deal of pleasure to see them subverted to the
cause of "defending" their homes. Minenwerfers came in
different sizes, and our memorial ones are at the smaller end – probably the 7.58 cm light trench mortar version shown in the photo below. As also
shown in this photo, they would originally have been mounted on gun carriages, and apparently, until it rotted away, part of the wooden gun carriage to which it had been attached was still visible beneath one of the Ngatimoti mortars for a number of years after they were installed.

German troops manhauling a 7.58cm light Minenwerfer trench mortar

in the Champagne region, France, 1918.

Many of the war trophies brought back to
New Zealand were destroyed by the military during periods of social unrest between the First and Second World Wars, lest they fall into the hands of dangerous elements like unionists, Communists and (God forbid!) pacifists. Others were vandalized, stolen, junked, like Brereton's Turkish pontoon, as embarrassing reminders of a jingoistic colonial past, or else lost to the depredations of time - a fate the Ngatimoti mortars were close to suffering. A recent and timely initiative led by Ian Davey and members of the
Motueka Valley Association has seen the memorial mortars refurbished and given a new lease of life. (3)Enough time has now passed to enable us to see the First World War in its historical context and once again appreciatethe

sacrifice made 100 years ago by the young men of the Motueka Valley and their families. There are very few WWI Minenwerfer trench mortars still in existence around the world today. Ngatimoti is fortunate to still have these rare trophies, and hopefully future generations
will continue to value and care for them.

Refurbished mortars today.

Sandblasting revealed that they were partly constructed of brass

so have been repainted to reflect that detail.

References

1) Fox, Dr Aaron (1987) “Silent
Sentinels: The War Trophies of the First NZ Expeditionary Force in War and
Peace.”

A Kiwi soldier's "bivvie" in the trenches at Armentières, July 1916National Army Museum (9th Mar 2015). Photo from page 05 of album WWI Photograph Album - Western Front. In Website National Army Museum. Retrieved 14th Mar 2016 07:15, from http://nam.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/11

1 comment:

Very interesting, Anne. My wife and I visited the Ngatimoti Memorial a few weeks ago and we did wonder about the mortars.

We met your husband yesterday (28/9/18) when we came for some of his chooks. I told him that a Mr Ham of Ngatimoti was WW1's first NZ casualty, quite ignorant of the fact that it was you who dug this nugget of information up!

About Me

"What is history but a fable agreed upon?", asked Napoleon.
I have an abiding fascination with history in all its forms, including historical fiction. My name is Anne McFadgen and I live at Ngatimoti, in the Motueka Valley. Under my nom de 'net, "Annis", I've written quite a few reviews for historical novels and the odd article under my own name.
I live close to our local WWI war memorial and as the centenary of WWI approaches, I've been working on a collaborative project with Ngatimoti historian, Ed Stevens, to retrieve some detail about the lives of the men on the Ngatimoti Memorial who served in the Great War, but have become lost in time.